While I was in the hospital I got into “adult coloring”. The phrase sounds like you’re adding color to vaguely illicit pictures, but I mainly like to color flowers and nature things.

I kind of got a reputation as “the one that colors all the time”. I even had one doctor that would insist on seeing my coloring for the week when he would take over for his associate. Even other patients would wander in to take a look at my coloring. This was slightly disconcerting as everyone on my floor at the time was on containment—meaning we were deemed either highly contagious or highly likely to catch anything from anybody (as in my case).

As it turned out, the gift shop at the hospital has a great selection of adult coloring books. They’re one of the few places that sells spiral bound books. It makes them easy to color and you can keep them like a sketch book. And they’re reasonably priced. Now that coloring for adults is a “thing” everybody wants to charge an arm and a leg for a coloring book.

I’ve decided that when I’m back able to do more computer work, I’m going to make my own coloring book and market it. I might sell it for two bucks, just to be contrary.

But as usual, I digress.

I’ve always had a thing for colored pencils. As I got into the world of graphics to support myself, I decided I liked Prismacolor pencils above all. I like that they lay down a nice, saturated color with their waxy cores. But over time, Prismas have become extremely expensive. And the quality is going down. You glance at them wrong and the core breaks making them impossible to sharpen unless you do some work on them. But at two bucks or more for a pencil, you shouldn’t have to work on it!

While I was in the hospital, some fellow colorers and artists weighed in on their favorite colored pencils. Several people recommended Prang. I found a set of 36 Prangs for under 20 bucks and snapped it up. Even if I didn’t like them for all coloring needs, they could be useful.

I got them in the mail today. I tried one and was thinking I wasn’t impressed. It didn’t color as smoothly. I decided to give it a better chance and chose another color. Even with my beloved Prismas, some colors are “scratchy” for lack of a better term. The second Prang was great! It wasn’t as saturated in color as the Prisma but it really did color nicely! They blend well, too.

After coloring for a little bit, I noticed that they were holding a point well, too. I like to color with a sharp point, and with Prismas that means a lot of sharpening and waste of expensive pencils. The Prangs keep their point for a decently long time. I haven’t actually tried sharpening one yet, but for now, I’m thinking I might switch, if only to save some money. I don’t think Prang is open stock which is a drawback. I use a lot of certain colors (red and green) and open stock pencils let me replace those. But I can live with it. I could buy a whole box of Prang for the price of a few single Prismas.

Do any of you guys color or use colored pencils a lot? What kind do you like?

I started another little blog thing for re-honing my writing and word wrangling. Feel free to take a look if you’re so inclined. I’m not going to worry about how it looks or keeping the “look and feel” consistent throughout. Sometimes I get bogged down with that sort of thing rather than concentrating on the writing part. The blog is about my strange cooking habits. Perhaps some of it really shouldn’t be admitted to, but there you go! 😀

I’m baaaack. Yep, I’ve been in the hospital again. It’s been so long since I posted that I can’t remember what I last shared about my hospital adventures. Let’s just say of the last 2 years, I’ve spent about 10 months of it in the hospital. This past Christmas was the first one in three years that I wasn’t in the hospital. It was good to be home for Christmas, even if I wasn’t entirely ambulatory.

This last hospital adventure started out with what was supposed to be a couple of days to take some IV antibiotics to combat an infection building in some skin grafting I had done. The hospital decided to administer a med that was on my allergy list. :O On Thanksgiving evening I coded and ended up in a coma and on a ventilator for five days. I guess they had to use the paddles on me and everything. They called my poor mother at 5 am and told her to come right away because they weren’t sure they could get me back.

I guess I’m too cantankerous to chuck it in yet, and when they took the ventilator out to see if I could breathe on my own I woke and said “Who the hell are you people!?”

They told my mom that I might have some brain issues as they had no idea how long I’d been out before they found me. I do notice that it’s harder to do crossword puzzles now, and I do have an annoying hand tremor that makes coloring a bit difficult. Crochet still works ok though!

My doctor for this last hospital stay is referred to as “Doctor Santa” by many of the aides and nurses. He has a glorious head of white curly hair that falls to his shoulders. He has blue eyes that dance when he’s joking, though you’d never know he jokes from his deadpan delivery and dry wit. My kidney doctor came in one day while the Doc Santa was in my room and says “Is this not the most handsome doctor in the hospital?” I didn’t comment but I was thinking that several of my doctors had a sort of GQ model look about them. :O

My mom had brought a lap robe that I crocheted to the hospital. One day when Dr. Santa came in he asked if I had crocheted it myself. I was surprised that he even noticed the thing. I said yes and he proceeded to say how nice it looked and what a nice border it had and how there was no buckling and how neat and even the stitches were. I thought to myself, here’s a man who either crochets or has someone at home who does!

While I was away my desktop computer pined so much for me that it died apparently. :O Luckily I had a laptop that I can use. I haven’t had the energy (nor the inclination) to get all of my software and such ported over so there won’t be many pictures from me for awhile. I’ve been thinking of doing a little side blog about not much just to get back into the routine of writing and typing and sitting up again.

I’m more mobile now. I was able to ditch the wheelchair and graduate to a rollator, which is a rolling walker that has a seat on it. So if I get wobbly legged I can sit down for a minute. Since I no longer drive, I had to take Wheels home from the hospital. Those of you who have read my adventures know that can be a trip. This last homecoming, I couldn’t get up out of the bus seat. I ended up having t call the fire rescue people to get me off the bus. They were very nice (and also had the look of GQ about them…) and helped me all the way into my apartment. I confess I have a Robert Plant poster hanging up in my living room. One of the firemen says “Oh cool! Are you a Robert Plant fan, too?!” It’s always good to run into other people that share your fandoms.

So, there you have it. My adventures for some time. Hopefully I won’t find myself in the hospital for long term stays any more. I still have to go for outpatient things, but I’m ready to stay home now.

It was recently reported that Prince died from a Fentanyl overdose. It’s sad, I think. But it gave me pause. During my five-month stay in the hospital, pain management was a big thing. At one point my doctor set me up with the Fentanyl Transdermal Patch in a very low dose. I can understand why people with pain would love the stuff. It works in small doses. But another part of my stay involved getting back on my feet and walking again after lying down for a few months.

The first therapy session after having the patch applied I did my usual thing of standing up using a walker which was about as far as I’d gotten in the process. On this day when I stood up, the room began to spin wildly around me. There were sparkly stars everywhere. The therapists began to have auras. I’ve never been able to see auras before even though many of my college friends had always insisted they’d seen some, usually after ingesting something mysterious…

Needless to say, back into bed I went while the stars and auras faded. And that was the last of the Fentanyl for me!! One of the therapists later said she thought I was looking decidedly high that day when she came in.

I guess I’m a stick in the mud. I never really understood the getting high thing, especially if that was an example. I was also given Dilaudid during staple pullings and wound treatments. There’s another one that’ll work on your head. If they gave it fast (via IV) there was a huge head rush but also an instant relief of pain. I hated that head rush. But some nurses said that people liked it.

Me, I think my own thoughts and peculiarities are enough wackiness for my brain. Or maybe I’ve just gotten old.

Didja miss me? I’m now back at home after being in the hospital since November 20th of last year. Yep. FIVE MONTHS in long term hospital care. Not a picnic let me tell you. And I’m still not ambulatory–my livingroom now looks like a hospital room. But at least I am home, which feels nice.

I’ve been doing crafty things while doing all that lying down though. A little crochet. And I’ve become obsessed with adult coloring books!

I’ll make a longer post with an overview of the last months later. Right now I’m just trying to get caught up with month’s worth of emails. :O

Notes: This cute little bowl was the October CAL in the Red Heart Group on Ravelry. It only took a couple of hours to make (at a leisurely pace, probably the only pace I have these days). It’s very tiny so it wouldn’t hold many treats but I think it’d be great filled with Hershey’s Kisses. I modified the lid just a tad by adding one extra decrease round, and one extra finishing round. For the stem I just did two rows of SC and attached it in some odd, convoluted manner that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Notes: This is a cute little square–I like the star shaped pattern in the middle. The pattern has both chart and illustrated written instructions. The chart actually came in handy when I got confused at one point!